


it was a simple thing; l lawliet x reader

by sadwhitegirl (orphan_account)



Category: Death Note
Genre: Characters Are Probably OOC As Fuck, Kira - Freeform, L - Freeform, Other, Reader-Insert, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Smart!Reader, Suicidal!Reader, Suicide, Unconfessed Love, You're Not A Mary Sue, depressed!reader, light - Freeform, reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 07:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6648118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sadwhitegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a simple thing. </p><p>[ warnings archive doesn't cover are in tags ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	it was a simple thing; l lawliet x reader

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if the reader seems too fem.. It's hard for me to write completely neutral stuff because I'm a demigirl...
> 
> +
> 
> Characters are probably quite OOC just because it's been so long since I've watched Death Note. I definitely appreciate CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and if I feel it's necessary, I may tweak the story a bit after hearing some. Thank you so much!
> 
> +
> 
> Y/N: Your Name  
> L/N: Last Name

“ _Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.._ ” ~Ernest Hemingway

-

It was a simple thing.

You were pretty young, but you were a bright student from America known for your riddle-solving and resourcefulness.

But as the great Ernest Hemingway once said, happiness in people like you wasn't a common thing.

You were numb, and you hated it. You were so numb, you’d take a blade to your skin and you would bleed, but you would barely feel a thing. It was laughable, the small traces of emotion you experienced felt like a sick joke.

You wore large, oversized sweaters with long leggings to hide yourself. You were so disgusted. Disgusted with your lack of emotion and understanding, disgusted at your body, disgusted at what you’d done to yourself.. And now you were disgusted that you couldn’t find Kira. You were stupid, smart apparently, but stupid.

And then one day L scooted his chair closer to yours, bringing his laptop along. He took the strawberry off of his cake and held it in front of you like an offering. It still had a bit of whipped cream and vanilla frosting left on it.

“Uh, L?” You’re confused. What was he doing?

He looks at you carefully. It was obvious he wasn’t nervous, but he wasn’t overly eager either. Just… Careful.

“Y/N, you haven't eaten in over a week.. Only Light and I have noticed, but it won't be long before the others do..” He doesn't whisper, but he’s not loud enough for the others to hear.

“I'm not hungry,” You lie at the same volume. You were, but you were too annoyed at and disappointed in yourself to actually eat. In a totally cliché moment, your stomach gave you away. He held the strawberry closer to you. You took a deep breath, exhaling shakily. “Thanks…” you replied in a whisper, taking the fruit.

“No problem.”

-

It was a simple thing.

You were determined to follow this lead, and it was late.

So late, in fact, that L had already gone to sleep on the sofa they brought in after he was found sleeping in his office chair and the others had left.

Your sleeve slipped up to reveal some of your scars from when you were less careful about getting discovered. L was asleep, so you didn't bother moving it.

  
After the earlier event, you were more careful. L hadn't said anything about your clothing choices, but you somehow knew he knew something was off. It was written on his face on the rare occasion that he spoke to you.

“Y/N?” L inquired sleepily a few moments later, as you typed on the keyboard, following a new lead.

You pulled your sleeve down quickly.

“Yeah?” you chirped, trying not to seem exhausted.

“What was that on your arm?”

“What do you mean? My sweater sleeve?” you tried not to seem nervous as he kicked off the blanket he used.

“It’s kinda warm in here. I don't know how you could ever manage to wear such large, thick sweaters. Guess you're just cold from not eating,” L passive-aggressively prods at the issues just beneath your surface.

“Damn, you’re awfully passive-aggressive for someone who just woke up,” you tease, avoiding his analytical glances as you turned back to your work.

“And you’re awfully smart for an American. Let's move on from our irregularities, shall we?” L uncharacteristically sassed back. A small part of you froze. Smart for an American? Not smart for someone who’d been up the whole night, or anything like that, but… Smart for an American.

“And- and what does that mean? Do you think I'm average compared to those here? J-just smart for an American?” You ask, stumbling over your words as you knit your brows, trying to focus on the lead you were following. A part of you knew he didn’t mean it like that, but another, larger and more insecure part of you just had to wonder.

“What? No. What I meant was- I meant Americans are known for their lack of intelligence- International reputation and all, you know- and you're smart,” L oddly stuttered around his words, it was weird for him to act this way. Did he not like you or something? Sure, he gave you the strawberry the other day, but surely he would’ve done that for Light or anyone else on the case. “You should get some sleep, Y/N..” he adds, and you feel him looking at you pensively.

“Once I finish on this lead.”

“You can finish it tomorrow,” he argues, strangely aggressive.

“Okay..” you looked at him quizzically, pulling your knees to your chest, crossing your arms over them and placing your cheek on your stiff, sweater-covered arm. It was too late to go to the small apartment you had gotten in the area.

“Y/N? What are you doing?” L asks tiredly, his head on a pillow that was propped against the couch’s arm.

“Trying to go to sleep like you said, obviously..” Now that you had decided to go to sleep, you were a bit crabby at being bothered.

“Just come sleep on the couch,” he said, muffled by the pillow.

“I'm alright over here,” you said. Normally you wouldn’t care, but to you L was attractive in many aspects, and it was a bit awkward to sleep in the same place as someone you thought was cute. You shivered. Warm, he had said? Liar. It was winter, and when most of the crew left they turned the heating off to avoid wasting money, you both knew that.

“You're cold. It’s not like I'm asking you to be my wife. Just sleep on the couch.” L had been acting uncharacteristically bold in his sleepy state.

“Fine,” you grumbled, walking to the couch and resting your head near L’s feet, yours barely reaching his shoulders. Hunched over he seemed short, but when he was flat on his back, he was actually sort of tall, and lanky, too. You curled in on yourself, trying to take up as little space as possible. The blanket was small, and eventually, right before you fell asleep, it was yanked from you.

“You're stealing the blanket,” he hissed tiredly.

“I'm fucking cold,” you swore in a snarl, even more unusually bold than he was.

“So am I, otherwise I wouldn't have fucking complained.”

The two of you tugged against each other before he suddenly let go with an “Aha!”, causing you to almost fall off the couch. He catches you with his foot. You would be disgusted to be touched by L’s foot normally, but you were too relieved to care. You did not feel like hitting your head at this point in time.

“Just sleep the same direction as me,” L tells you.

“Will we fit?” you ask, too sleepy to care about your earlier worries of sleeping too closely with him.

“Yeah,” he scoffs, getting up so the two of you can fit properly. It's a bit of a tight squeeze, but you two manage to fit, both of you falling asleep in no time.

-

It was a simple thing.

L wanted more privacy and you had extra room in a more secluded area of town, so the two of you became roommates.

One night, looking for a pen in the desk in your room, he found instead a suicide letter draft. Thinking it was just a note for him (it did say “Dear L,” at the top), he read through it.

And he was horrified.

He almost ran into the living room, notebook paper in hand.

“What is this, Y/N?” L asked, giving you the opportunity to explain, almost praying it was some sick, twisted prank. His normally calm, still, intelligent persona was shaking under the pressure. He seemed angry from your perspective, rather than scared or really anything else he was actually feeling.

“Well, let me see,” you asked, wondering why he was so worried until he handed you the lined paper that was stained with your tears. You swallowed the lump in your throat like you had so many times before. “What were you doing in my room?” you asked, trying to sound angry like him but failing terribly as your lower lip trembled.

“What were you doing writing a suicide letter?!” L asked. “You know I need y-! You know the team and I need you to help with the Kira case!” L corrects himself, raising his voice.

“It’s not- It's not like- like I asked you to go in there and- and f-find it.. and- and read it!” You shouted back, raking your fingers through your hair (a/n: if you don't have hair, you moved your hands like that out of habit or something). You choked out a sob. This case was ruining you worse than you were when you began.

“You don't eat… You don't sleep... And you've got a suicide letter… And all you wear is long sleeves… I can't help but wonder..” he trails off, looking at your guilty expression. He stumbles back a moment. “No, no… It can't be. I would've known. I would've been able to calculate it, to know..” L rambles on, looking at you again at the end of his rant. “I'm supposed to be a genius, yet the one person I'm closest to kept the biggest secret from me…” he muses, keeping his gray-blue, now-unsteady eyes on you. You look down.

“Let me see,” he requests after a long period of silence.

“You don't want to,” you tell him. No one wants to. They always claim they want to help, that they care, but after seeing how many scars there are and how old they are, they give up on you.

“Let me see,” L says sternly.

You relent and roll up one sleeve… He gasps. You roll up another… He drops to his knees in front of the couch where you’re seated, taking in the old, darkened and fading scars, the maroon scabs, the upraised scars where you had done it so many times that they’d never fade, and the bright red, fresh ones from last night.

“Why? How could you do this to yourself, to-?” To me, he thought, but kept silent. He couldn’t let you know how attached he was, he couldn't let anyone know. It was too much risk, too much stress on both you and himself. Little did he know you felt the same way.

You hadn't had the courage to say how you were feeling about him in your letter, because if in the end he had somehow liked you in that way, he would've been destroyed by the possibilities.. It would've been too selfish of you to put him through that. But surely he knew on some level.

“To who?” you ask hesitantly, curiosity and a bit of hope still burning within you, even in this state.

“To- to me..” he replies in a small voice, looking at you with a certain quality that you can’t place.

“What- What do you mean-? What do you mean to you? I would be the dead one that nobody misses. Not you.”

L looks at you with widened, now red eyes as he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

“You know that's not true,” he says, his voice almost robotic, snapping out quickly.

The silence continued until dinner. He eats cake. You eat nothing.

The next day you are informed you are being taken off the Kira case and you’ll be going back to America in a week.

-

It was a simple thing.

Without the Kira case, you had nothing to live for. You were at the top of some office building, and you were about to jump.

But you had to say goodbye to him.

You called him.

“Y/N?! Where are you?!” he asks, panicked.

“It- it doesn't matter. It's too late to change anything. I just wanted to say goodbye. I'll miss you a lot.”

“You’re just going back to America, you can still email!” he says, beginning to relax.

“L.. I'm not going to America. I'm going somewhere much farther away,” you told him.

“No, no.. Where are you, Y/N?! Tell me!”

“I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I always did. But I- I don't deserve someone like you, and I don't deserve to be here on Earth anymore. It's time for me to go,” you replied, your voice hollow but shaking.

“Y/N, no! I love you, too! Don’t you die on me, Y/N! Don’t you leave me here!” L screamed into the phone, showing the rawest emotion you’d ever heard from him, or anyone really. You dropped the phone, stepping to the edge of the roof. It was over for you no matter what he said.

You jumped.

-

“Y/N L/N, a bright young student from America, found dead. Officials say it was a suicide, most likely motivated from being fired from her place of work. She will be missed,” the female reporter said in an almost monotone voice.

“Change the channel,” Light snarled to Misa, L remaining silent. How could he have let this happen to you? How could it be that no one noticed. He couldn't quite believe you were dead.

Sometimes in the early morning when he was working on the case, he’d turned to where you would work to say something and find an empty space.

Sometimes when it was lunchtime he’d consider getting something small for you, just so you wouldn’t starve, and then he’d remember that you were ashes, not a person with a stomach and a brain and those gorgeous but tired eyes.

Sometimes when the sun had set and he had gone home to the apartment, he’d go to your door to say goodnight, just before he’d realize. You were gone.

On days like those, he would sleep in your bed at night, letting himself he enveloped in that scent like the time you two slept on the couch together and ended up cuddling and he realized just how much he cared about you.

On days like those, he would wonder why he didn't realize the demons you were battling. He would dig in your desk drawer and find a razor blade and wonder how he hadn’t found it before. He would look in your closet of only over-sized shirts and wonder how he hadn’t noticed your insecurities.

On days like those, he would look in the mirror at himself and watch as he slowly seemed to transform into you.

It was a simple thing.

He missed you and you weren’t there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed dying! ❤️


End file.
